Emma Watson says she found Hollywood’s highly competitive environment ‘bone-breakingly painful’; admits actors pretend to be friends during promotions: ‘It broke me’

She said, “I was coming to those sets with an expectation that I think I had developed on Harry Potter, which was that the people I worked with were going to be my family and that we were going to be lifelong friends. I came to work looking for friendship and that was a very painful experience for me outside of Harry Potter and in Hollywood, like bone-breakingly painful because most people don’t come to those environments looking for friendships. They’re looking for: ‘This is my chance. This is my role. This is what I want out of it, I’m focused. This is my job. This is my career.’ And I was not of that mindset.”

She found the friendship rejection that came on other projects “really painful” to endure. “It’s so unusual to make a set of films (Harry Potter series) for 12 years and we were a community. We really were. And so I took that as an expectation into my other workplaces, and I just got my ass kicked. I really did,” she admitted.

Talking about how competition, envy, and hierarchy thwarted friendships in Hollywood, she said, “I think it was a combination. It was a Molotov cocktail of all of the above.” She called herself “not thick-skinned,” adding that “maybe I wasn’t built for those highly competitive environments.”

Emma got emotional speaking about her experience in Hollywood and said, “It broke me. But in a way I’m proud that it did because I guess that means I have something left to break. I have a heart left to break.” She called it a “hard learning” experience while also giving herself credit for “keep my humanity.”

Along with the competitive nature of the job, Emma also addressed the overwhelming nature of attending red carpets and how movie promotions can be soul-crushing. “I think that was the other thing that was really difficult about movies. You always get asked when you’re promoting these big films, ‘So do you guys hang out on set and like are you all friends?’”

She continued, “And everyone sort of like nods enthusiastically. But the truth is no one has seen each other outside of work, like, very rarely, mostly because the schedule is insane. Everyone’s so tired that when they get any time off you’re going straight back to your hotel room to try and claw in any piece of rest that you possibly can.”

“Friendships require time and trust and presence, and those things very rarely come about,” she said, adding, “They can, and they do occasionally, but it it’s more of a solar eclipse than an everyday situation. But you have to pretend. I think that’s the part that starts to feel icky after a while is you have to pretend that you’re all best friends.”

“What’s so sad, and I know this isn’t just the case for me, but I think people wish they were. I think we wish we did have those real connections and we did have that real support. So having to pretend that something exists that you actually really want but don’t have is … pretty grainy in the wound,” she added.

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